John F. Orr
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer at Norfolk Southern
Good morning. Thanks, Mark. I'm excited to update you all on our safety and operating performance.
Turning to Slide 6. Safety is the value through which all operating decisions are made. Our entire team is committed and engaged in our pursuit of safety excellence. The improvements to date are a testament to the rigor of our safety protocols and a strong indication of the positive outcomes we can achieve in 2025. Our FRA reportable injury ratio increased from 1.1 to 1.15. And I'm encouraged that our Q4 results improved by 13% compared to the same-period last year. In fact, in December, our FRA ratio was 0.61 and was the lowest reportable injury ratio since December of 2020.
Our FRA train accident rate for the full-year improved by 27% and in both cases, we are carrying positive momentum into Q1 and building on these strong results. For example, we finished 2024 and started 2025 injury-free for over 1 million man-hours across all operations. At Norfolk Southern, people are at the heart of our strategy. Our Academy is educating thousands of leaders. Its curriculum offers an integrated approach that combines technical training with skill building and operational readiness, business planning and management engagement. We are proactively driving safety performance and enterprise excellence. We are building generational railroaders.
Turning to Slide 7. Our PSR 2.0 approach is delivering simultaneous efficiency and service improvements. In 2024, our network performance progressively gained traction, anchored by dwell and velocity. We are dwelling less in yards, moving faster between terminals and rightsizing the fleet. This is generating fluidity and capacity, aligning our active fleets to volume, decreasing fleet maintenance expenses and reducing capital.
Year-over-year, our system speed improved by 10%. Taking it down a level, in the quarter, intermodal train speed gained 3.1% and the true success stories were the remarkable gains in merchandise and unit train speeds, up 11% and 17% respectively. As we drove up velocity, we took out assets, grew the business and we did more with less, ultimately growing volumes by 5%.
For example, year-over-year car miles per car day rose over 13%. We are seeing similar benefits in our locomotive fleet. Velocity allowed us to store more locomotives, decrease our material expenses, increase our fleet reliability and drove overall fleet productivity. Year-over-Year GTMs per available horsepower improved by 19%, but we also delivered record fuel efficiencies, both for the quarter and the full-year.
As we drive operating efficiencies, we are also delivering a quality product for our customers. After all, we're a company committed to outstanding service. We finished the year very strong, culminating with a successful intermodal perfect peak season year-over-year, handling 7% more parcel volume per day with zero controllable failures.
Turning to Slide 8, deeds matter. In 2024, we committed to tackle network underperformance and to close our margin gap. As Mark said, through a total team effort, we exceeded. For example, our car maintenance war room meticulously drilled down to root causes, fine-tuned our repair processes and provided near real-time feedback for the field. As a result, year-over-year running repair and repaired well were down 31% and 23% respectively.
Improvements are also coming from our need for speed war room, whose mandate includes design speed into the network, overcome historic speed barriers and drive out infrastructure bottlenecks. The need for speed war room has contributed to our year-over-year 10% AAR speed increase. They are now turning their attention to challenging every permanent and temporary slow order to actively reduce stops and drive additional fuel efficiencies.
Over-the-road interruptions decreased by 25%, delivering significant gains in crew productivity and crew availability. For example, year-over-year, crew overtime and terminal detention costs were both down 19%. When I say this is a team effort, I'm talking about every NS railroader. So we are working cross-functionally, cross-structurally and broadly across the entire enterprise ecosystem to eliminate waste, increase revenues and drive efficiencies. These disciplines have allowed us to restructure our capital requirements, freeing up funds for key projects without compromise. First, we are entering 2025 with tremendous momentum and we are unlocking productivity value for our network.
The next phase transformation of our operating plan is in development. The new plan will roll-out in Q1. It will further reduce handlings, introduce tighter standards for terminal times and connections and will require us to continue stretching for improvement in our operating processes.
In 2025, we will focus on fuel and mechanical infrastructure. These are big rocks for efficiencies and savings. I'm incredibly proud of the results the operating team has achieved in 2024. They rose to every challenge, showing NS grit, tenacity and Drive. Coupled with PSR 2.0, their capabilities are driving network value-creation and closing the service and productivity gaps with our peers.
I will now turn it over to Ed.
